BeadEncore

BEADWORK Quick and Easy 2013 special issue

I am delighted to have three projects included in BEADWORK magazine's 2013 special issue: Quick and Easy.  There are two of my earring designs and a bracelet that is a collaborative design with my friend, fellow bead enthusiast, and bead-weaving teaching partner, Reem Iversen.  When it comes to designing, choosing color schemes, or working out the details for our pattern instructions, two heads are better than one!  

The Chevron Poppy Bracelet is a design that Reem and I developed for our Bead weaving students at the Princeton Adult School.  They are the best pattern testers!  The bracelet is made with chevron stitch, as is the flower-shaped beaded button that is used as the clasp.  

The Monreale Earrings were inspired by a visit to the medieval cloister of Monreale, in Sicily.  I tried to capture some of the flavor of the architecture by using long twisted bugle beads that remind me of the pairs of slender, twisted columns in the cloister.  One feature that I loved was that each of the columns has a different surface decoration.  So the earrings can be decorated in different ways too!  Try substituting 3x4mm Chinese crystals for the 3mm firepolished beads or charlottes for the size 15º seed beads.  
Please be sure to file the sharp edges of your bugle beads before making these earrings--these beads can be sharp enough to cut even Fireline thread!  I use a fine jeweler's file; similar files can be purchased at just about any hardware store.

For a while, I was fixated on Celtic knots; I tried several different ways to express these intricately worked knots in beadwork.  One of my successful attempts (there were many failures!) resulted in the Celtic Knot Earrings. Three pair of these earrings are shown in the magazine, but who has noticed that in one pair, the knot goes in the opposite direction? That is because the metallic green/seafoam pair was made by Reem Iversen and she is a left-handed beader.  She was testing the pattern directions for me and we realized that there are right-hand Celtic knots and left-hand ones.  You can see the difference in this diagram:

So, if you are a left-handed beader, your knot will look like the one on the left, while a right-handed beader will end up with the one on the right.

If you follow the basic technique in the magazine, but make a strip of herringbone that is 100 rows long, you can tie it into a four-sided Celtic knot.  This makes a nice pendant for a necklace, as shown at left.